With a rapidly growing trend of mobile and remote data access over a high-speed communication network such as third generation (3G) or fourth generation (4G) cellular services, accurately delivering and deciphering data streams become increasingly challenging and difficult. The high-speed communication network which is capable of delivering information includes, but not limited to, wireless network, cellular network, wireless personal area network (“WPAN”), wireless local area network (“WLAN”), wireless metropolitan area network (“MAN”), or the like. While WPAN can be Bluetooth or ZigBee, WLAN may be a Wi-Fi network in accordance with IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards.
Typically, wireless network performance depends in part on the quality of the transmission channel. For example, if the channel conditions are good, the network may perform with higher speed and capacity than when the channel conditions are poor. To obtain the best network performance, wireless networks may rely on user devices (e.g., user equipment “UE”) to report control information back to the network. The control information includes parameters indicating the channel conditions and/or transmission parameters.
In the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long-Term Evolution (LTE) standard, a Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) carries important control information, such as HARQ-ACK bits or SR bits for carrier aggregation. The performance of ACK messages play an important role in the overall downlink performance as the residual error rate of HARQ is in the same order of the feedback error rate of ACK bits. For example, after a user device receives a transmission from a network server, it generates acknowledgement (ACK) bits that indicates whether or not the transmission was properly received. The ACK bits are transmitted back to the network server through the PUCCH. The server can determine from the received ACK bits whether the transmission was properly received, and initiate a retransmission if necessary.
Discontinuous transmission (DTX) is a method of momentarily powering-down, or muting, a mobile or portable wireless UE when there is no voice input to the send. This optimizes the overall efficiency of the wireless voice communications system. During DTX mode, no ACKs are transmitted. However, it is then up to the receiver to determine whether ACK/NACK symbols have been received from a UE, or if the UE is in DTX mode. Unfortunately, conventional DTX detection may lead to detection errors and corresponding transmission inefficiencies.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a mechanism that efficiently detects DTX operation to enhance network performance.